The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
"you're coming to business. Glad to hear ye talk in that sensible way, Mr. Feverel. You may guess I wants her bad enough. The house ain't itself now she's away, and I ain't myself. Well, sir! This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not to meddle with her at all--I can't mak' out how you come to be acquainted; not to try to get her to be meetin' you--and if you'd 'a seen her when she left, you would--when did ye meet?--last grass, wasn't it?--your word as a gentleman not to be writing letters, and spyin' after her--I'll have her back at once. Back she shall come!"
"Give her up!" cried Richard.
"Ay, that's it!" said the farmer. "Give her up."
The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.
"You sent her away to protect her from me, then?" he said savagely.
"That's not quite it, but that'll do," rejoined the farmer.
"Do you think I shall harm her, sir?"
"People seem to think she'll harm you, young gentleman," the farmer said with some irony.
"Harm me--she? What people?"
"People pretty intimate with you, sir."
"What people? Who spoke of us?" Richard began to scent a plot, and would not be balked.
"Well, sir, look here," said the farmer. "It ain't no secret, and if it be, I don't see why I'm to keep it. It appears your education's peculiar!" The farmer drawled out the word as if he were describing the figure of a snake. "You ain't to be as other young gentlemen. All the better! You're a fine bold young gentleman, and your father's a right to be proud of ye. Well, sir--I'm sure I thank him for't he comes to hear of you and Luce, and of course he don't want nothin' o' that--more do I. I meets him there! What's more I won't have nothin' of it. She be my gal. She were left to my protection. And she's a lady, sir. Let me tell ye, ye won't find many on 'em so well looked to as she be--my Luce! Well, Mr. Fev'rel, it's you, or it's her--one of ye must be out o' the way. So we're told. And Luce--I do believe she's just as anxious about yer education as yer father she says she'll go, and wouldn't write, and'd break it off for the sake o' your education. And she've kep' her word, haven't she?--She's a true'n. What she says she'll do!--True blue she be, my Luce! So now, sir, you do the same, and I'll thank ye."
Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the mind of the lover as he listened to this speech.
His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep. "Mr. Blaize," he said, "this is very kind of the people you allude to, but I am of an age now to think and act for myself--I love her, sir!" His whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face quivered.
"Well!" said the farmer, appeasingly, "we all do at your age--somebody or other. It's natural!"
"I love her!" the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by his passion to have a sense of shame in the confession. "Farmer!" his voice fell to supplication, "will you bring her back?"
Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked--what for? and where was the promise required?--But was not the lover's argument conclusive? He said he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not in consequence immediately send for her, that they might be together. All very well, quoth the farmer, but what's to come of it?--What was to come of it? Why, love, and more love! And a bit too much! the farmer added grimly.
"Then you refuse me, farmer," said Richard. "I must look to you for keeping her away from me, not to--to--these people. You will not have her back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?"
Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an objection of his own. And it was, that her character was at stake, and God knew whether she herself might not be in danger. He spoke with a kindly candour, not without dignity. He complimented Richard personally, but young people were young people; baronets' sons were not in the habit of marrying farmers' nieces.
At first the son of a System did not comprehend him. When he did, he said: "Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for heaven, to marry her when I am of age, will you have her back?"
He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly. Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these signs, and observed: "It's not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?"
The farmer signified it was not that.
"It's because my father is against me," Richard went on, and undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely and for ever resist his son's inclinations. Argument being a cool field where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He drew pictures of Lucy, of her truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death, from death to life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent. Perhaps he did move the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of his pride.
Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he must have.
The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth botheration. "May smoke heer now," he said. "Not when--somebody's present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don't mind smell?"
Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
"Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin' to this?" ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco. "You didn't think much of her that day, young gentleman! I introduced ye. Well! things comes about. Can't you wait till she returns in due course, now?"
This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another torrent.
"It's queer," said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his wrinkled-up temples.
Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and staring at Richard an instant:
"Look, young gentleman! My word's gone. I've spoke it. I've given 'em the 'surance she shan't be back till the Spring, and then I'll have her, and then--well! I do hope, for more reasons than one, ye'll both be wiser--I've got my own notions about her. But I an't the man to force a gal to marry 'gainst her inclines. Depend upon it I'm not your enemy, Mr. Fev'rel. You're jest the one to mak' a young gal proud. So wait,--and see. That's my 'dvice. Jest tak' and wait. I've no more to say."
Richard's impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they were serious.
The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with "Wait till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!" dinning despair in his ears, stood up to depart. Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions to his Folly, did not appear. A maid rushed by Richard in the passage, and slipped something into his grasp, which fixed on it without further consciousness than that of touch. The mare was led forth by the Bantam. A light rain was falling down strong warm gusts, and the trees were noisy in the night. Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give him his hand, and say all was well. He liked the young man for his earnestness and honest outspeaking. Richard could not say all was well, but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer's in a sharp squeeze, when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing grey image on the waters of the Abbey-lake. Before sunrise Tom Bakewell was abroad, and met the missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra leisurely along the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at. Cassandra's flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped: all that was in her had been taken out by that wild night. On what heaths and heavy fallows had she not spent her noble strength,